memory_alphafandomcom-20200223-history
Forum:Yet another skin change
__TOC__ Starting tomorrow, Wikia will roll out a new skin to all their wikis - including ours. At first, this new skin will be an option which you will have to enable in your preferences. However, it is scheduled to become the default skin in two weeks, with even the option to switch back to the current "Monaco" skin being removed another two weeks later (early November). You can learn more about the new skin, and see it in action on some test wikias already, here and here. Now, as satisfying as it is to finally see Wikia staff convinced of the opinion about Monaco that we had all along, we will apparently have to assure them again that we really don't want some of the features that will come with the new skin. Some of them had already been declined by this community once, while others seem to be new, yet totally out of place on an "encyclopedia wiki" as ours. I will list these features below with the initial assumption that there's consensus to really not want them. Scream if you agree, and give reasons if you don't: *Image attribution, where, to each thumbnail in the content area, the line "Added by USERNAME" is added. Reason: Inviting vanity edits as well as username vandalism. *Edit attribution, where, at the top of each article, the line "Edited # days ago by USERNAME" is added. Reason: Same as above. *"New photos" gallery, where, in the right-hand sidebar, new image uploads are listed as if they were part of a photo gallery. Reason: We don't have "photos", and for most images we upload, we claim fair use - which means they need to be used in some sort of "review context" and not on their own. *User blogs. Reason: we already considered them un-encyclopedic and not compatible with our mission statement of being a neutral encyclopedia. *Article comments, where apparently, comments are placed directly beneath an article instead of on a separate talk page. "Apparently", because the current explanations are somewhat unclear to me. Reason: we don't want to invite "comments", but we want to "talk" about the content of articles in a place that does not have to be read by everyone. We're an encyclopedia, not Facebook! *Achievements. Not really sure how they are supposed to work, but just assume the typical social-networking crap like "has edited # pages" or "has uploaded # images". Reason: More vanity edits just to get achievements and, as a consequence, more work for the rest of us to revert that crap. *Fixed width. A screen resolution of more than 1024px wide will lead to empty space to both sides of the content (Added: 22:43, October 7, 2010 (UTC)) -- Cid Highwind 12:28, October 5, 2010 (UTC) :Got some confirmations on a couple of things on the list here: :*User blogs, Achievements, and Article comments are all optional and will not be turned on at MA according to Sannse. -- sulfur 15:48, October 6, 2010 (UTC) Feature discussion As a beta tester on this skin, the only thing I can do with a clear conscience is SCREAM! - 12:35, October 5, 2010 (UTC) :In terms of image attribution, 90%+ of the images we use are (as noted above) for fair use and copyright someone else (usually Paramount, Pocket Books, or IDW Publishing of late). The attribution on the article page suggests that the image is being "attributed" to a user rather than to the actual copyright holder. This is a potential issue with the delicate copyright line that we are already currently walking. -- sulfur 12:38, October 5, 2010 (UTC) ::I largely agree with Cid, to varying degrees. Clearly the image attribution is a problem, blogs are not appropriate for an encyclopedia, and article comments should not be on the same page as the article. 31dot 12:43, October 5, 2010 (UTC) :Note: Things that we have been told by Wikia staff about the new skin and customizations include: :* Admins will not be allowed to change Wiki Activity to recent changes for all users, but you are welcome to change it for just yourself using your personal js page. The same is true for changing Follow to Watch. :* Removing image attribution for everyone is against the Terms of Use. You're welcome to remove it through your own personal CSS, though. :As best I can tell, the first suggests that we cannot even customize the menu to be similar to the one we currently have on the Monaco skin on the left which includes "Search", "Random page", "Upload image", "Recent changes", "Watchlist", "Help", "Newest articles", "Special pages", and "What links here". -- sulfur 12:50, October 5, 2010 (UTC) Comment by User:Archduk3 and 31dot moved to next section. :::Re: Hosting alternative: I think a discussion about this could and should be kept on this page, for all to see as an at least potential alternative. I'd suggest to make it a separate section from this "feature discussion", though. Regarding new features and turning them off, I read somewhere on those blogs that at least we could request to disable image attribution. I'm definitely going to request disabling all the stuff, and we'll see where that gets us. -- Cid Highwind 13:42, October 5, 2010 (UTC) ::::From sannse's blog page: :::::"It’s not permitted to remove the right sidebar modules, blogs, and image attribution or add a banner that shifts the entire content area down the page, or alter the fixed width." ::::My reading of this is that the photo gallery Cid mentioned above can't be removed, either. Nor can we use our realworld or alternate universe banners at the top of the page any more. Not to mention the issues of the blogs and image attributions. Oh, and our js is still screwed up. :( -- Renegade54 14:10, October 5, 2010 (UTC) :::My reading of that is a little different - our banners do not "shift content down the page" but just "rearrange content while keeping its overall position on the page fixed". As such, I'm going to assume that what we've done with our banners is perfectly in line with their new Terms of Use unless they come over to yell and shout at me. -- Cid Highwind 14:26, October 5, 2010 (UTC) ::::::The new skin's horrible; I can hardly believe they're making it compulsory! In fact, I'd be very surprised if there's not a major backlash against this. It just makes me not want to edit any more. And surprise, surprise: the banner's don't even work! What a mess! --Defiant 16:14, October 6, 2010 (UTC) That's because the js isn't working. When the js goes down, all the new skins features don't work, including things like the menus that have the history, move, protect, delete, links to, and recent changes "buttons". - 20:54, October 6, 2010 (UTC) ::::::Well, they need to get our js working, then! --Defiant 22:49, October 6, 2010 (UTC) Hosting away from Wikia? In that case, what are our options for finding hosting elsewhere? Those terms of use clearly show that wikia is no longer interested in working with us to meet the needs of our community. Instead, it seems we now need to meet the needs of wikia. I simply don't think that wikia is the best choice for us any longer. I do understand that "we" sold them the web address before I joined, but that doesn't seem like such a hard thing to work around. At the very least, we should consider all our options before taking some off the table. If necessary, any such discussion could be moved to a different forum page, to keep this one on track, but as I see it, these two things are walking hand-in-hand.- 13:06, October 5, 2010 (UTC) :While skimming through some of the posts at Wikia, it seems that according to them even if a wiki leaves Wikia, a copy is left behind. So, even if we do host it somewhere else, and most of us follow it, it looks like it would still exist here for people to use. 31dot 13:39, October 5, 2010 (UTC) ::The ads would also be more personalized to this site if we were to move, but I'm guessing you guys already know that! IMO, the downside of moving from wikia (both in this case and when I investigated the possibility of moving The X-Files wiki) is that a copy of the whole site still remains with wikia, no matter what. --Defiant 14:35, October 5, 2010 (UTC) :::It is true that Wikia considers any attempt to leave Wikia a "fork" rather than a "move" - meaning that, yes, this wiki will stay as it is no matter what. However, if "social" is the new craze for Wikia, and all it values is page impressions and selling more ads anyway, I'm sure that this site with achievements and vanity edits, and another site with the current set of admins and policies, will become notably "different" soon enough. :::A word of caution, though. In the past, Wikia hasn't really been above such action, and even went so far as to commandeer a wiki, removing all people in charge and handing it over to another set of admins. To avoid that from happening here, I'd like to pre-empt them and publicly state that I'm going to stay neutral in this matter and will continue to maintain this wiki. :) -- Cid Highwind 16:38, October 5, 2010 (UTC) :I don't want to leave, either- it doesn't help Star Trek fans and would be pointless since this site would still be here. But we should keep pressure on to ensure our concerns are addressed.31dot 00:09, October 6, 2010 (UTC) ::::I've always thought Wikia's attitude & behavior to any wiki that essentially even considers moving from them to be highly disgraceful and unprofessional, so I would definitely favor a move. I don't even see the need for such heavy-handed tactics; wouldn't simply encouraging wikis to stay be enough?! Anyway, what matters is what the community at large decides. So, in this case (as always), I'll ultimately support whatever the majority of us MA users decide. --Defiant 00:29, October 6, 2010 (UTC) I'm not saying we should move right now, if ever, but in the interest of coinciding all options, we may as well find out the feasibility. I think the changes in the terms of use along with these new "features" may result in wikia breaking our copyright policy. In that case, the only two options I see are Memory Alpha going elsewhere or this site having a different terms of use. I don't want to have the site taken offline or the database locked over a lawsuit, and while I'm not sure if that's what would happen, I don't think anyone wants to find out. As far as I'm concerned the ball is still in wikia's court, but if wikia is unwilling to work with us on these matters, I'm for going elsewhere, but I would rather not. - 03:51, October 6, 2010 (UTC) :::::This has been discussed to no end several times before. The problem is memory-alpha.com is probably the best name and it's owned by wikia now. We would have to battle this site for search engine placement - which is very hard to do. While I would approve such a move - it's just not feasible. — Morder (talk) 04:04, October 6, 2010 (UTC) ::::::Have the copyright concerns been discussed with Wikia's lawyers? I'd think that either the attribution changes are legally problematic — in which case, Wikia would presumably be as liable as its users — or they're legally OK, and all we're left with is a (not inconsiderable) aesthetic objection. (Seriously, I hope they work the bugs currently visible on the Glee wiki's front page out before taking this "live" on other wikis. It's hideous.) —Josiah Rowe 02:39, October 7, 2010 (UTC) It's live already. - 03:00, October 7, 2010 (UTC) ::::::I didn't realize last night that I was still on the old skin — the mess I was seeing on the Glee wiki was their new front page under Monaco. Now I'm on the new skin, and I see that the problems are different from what I thought they were. That said, my question about contact with Wikia's lawyers still stands. —Josiah Rowe 21:44, October 7, 2010 (UTC) Individual complaints Mobile skin unreadable All of a sudden, I guess coincident with this skin thing, MA is now virtually unreadable for me (a mobile user). The text is garbled all over the place, the text color is now light, light blue (cyan) on a white background. I've tried using the Monaco, MonoBook, and the Wikia skin (which I'd been using), but nothing helps. Does anyone else have this problem? Can I change the body text color to something legible (such as black)? If so, how? MA looks ok if I'm not using the mobile format, but I can't easily read or edit pages that way. How am I supposed to solve this? Is it even possible? Do I need to use a custom CSS? Wait and see if Wikia changes things? (Their site, in mobile format, looks fine: it appears only MA has been completely ruined!) I can't tolerate losing access to my favorite Web site! What's going on?! --Cepstrum 14:22, October 7, 2010 (UTC) PS: after posting this, I can't even read what I wrote! The only legible text are links (colored in cyan). It seems regular text is white-on-white. I've looked at other Wikia wikis, and they don't have this problem. So why does MA suffer? If you can, please leave a note on my talk page: I don't think I'll be able to read this forum unless the font color changes from white to something else. Could it at least be light gray? I know the regular view of MA has white text on a black background, but in mobile viewing, it shows up as white on white. Even light gray would be better than nothing! Thanks. --Cepstrum 14:29, October 7, 2010 (UTC) :I've added a text color change to black to your personal CSS file User:Cepstrum/wikia.css as a workaround. Let us know if that resolves the issue at least temporarily. We will have a more thorough look at mobile skin issues later. -- Cid Highwind 14:38, October 7, 2010 (UTC) Dear Cid: Thank you for trying to help! I assume that by editing my wikia.css you mean for me to choose the new Wikia skin. I tried that (cleared cache and all), but all the article text still appears invisible: all I can see are cyan-colored links. I wonder if that's because Wikia is using the Wikiaphone.css skin. Is it? I've been trying over and over to alter my Monaco CSS to change the colors to dark gray. Unfortunately, it only takes effect on pages *not* automatically converted to the mobile skin (such as my presences page after I make a change and the initial load of the homepage — and this forum, which I'm able to read in non mobile form because I've edited it — upon making an edit you first see it without the mobile format.) So I guess I'm locked out. Unless you're able to adjust my mobile skin, which I don't know if you can. It used to be called Wikiaphone.CSS. I'm not sure it's there, or, if it exists, where to get it to put on my username space for editing. Rats! And I've found the folks at Wikia don't answer my questions about the mobile skin for some reason. I don't know why this is an issue: wikipedia looks fine (uses MediaWiki but not Wikia), and the other wikis look fine (such as the Muppet Wikia wiki, which they keep telling us to visit to "test" the new look. I appreciate your help very much. If you can help me further, I'd be EXTREMELY grateful! --Cepstrum 15:36, October 7, 2010 (UTC) PS I can see your changes made a difference but only on the non-mobile version (which I get to see after making an edit). I should add: I can only see the contents of this forum if I edit it (even if I'm not going to make changes. But the text editor is the only that's readable (besides the cyan-colored links on the white background). I don't get it: how is it that Wikia changes my skin to their mobile one and yet preserves just some of the features here (such as the white text)? They used to override ALL of MA's uniqueness for easy mobile viewing (such as black on white, browser-standard link colors). Hmmm! I know this is a very low priority for the admins here, for most can access via a regular browser. But I can't. Rats. --Cepstrum 15:54, October 7, 2010 (UTC) Dear Cid (and *all* mobile users): After much trial-and-error, I've found a solution: create a "wikiaphone.css" page in your name space. Then Wikia will use parts of that to convert you to your mobile skin. I'm not sure if this is the best/proper solution; but it works. I took MA's monaco.css, made the color changes, and found they show up in mobile viewing. The downside: CSS is not a markup language I know, and as is, what I've done isn't so great. But I'm going to go back to using MA's Monaco and trying to just change the colors correctly. Right now, I made everything so dark that it's hard to read. But at least there's hope: with some tweaking (or if someone who knows better can help), I should be able to get it to be legible again. Hooray! Thanks, Cid. I'm going to try using the Wikia.CSS you made for me. Maybe one day Wikia will fix this, but until then, I'm thinking this will work. --Cepstrum 16:45, October 7, 2010 (UTC) Again, I know this is a low priority, but it'd be nice if a CSS expert could create a skin for mobile users. Thanks to your changes, Cid, I have black on white background. But this makes some sections unreadable (eg, front page, with dark on dark). In addition, the light colored text (yellow headings, cyan links) are a little hard to read. Not a big deal; I could probably customize it myself. But if you guys want a consistent theme "look/feel" for mobile users, it'd be nice to have a single mobile CSS. There are web sites that let you look at a page to see how a mobile user sees it. Not a big deal unless you want MA to look consistent for mobile users. --Cepstrum 16:56, October 7, 2010 (UTC) Skin changes/preference setting So MA still looks like before to me. I use chrome. When I go to preferences, I notice you can set your preferences for the "Monaco" skin, but it gives you other options too. So is this still going to be the case in the future? Can I always choose this current skin (monaco) or will everything *have* to be whatever the "new wikia look" is? Because with the new wikia look, there is now this black bar on the side of each article/page showing me recent changes and it makes everything look narrowed and just small and squeezed. And then the editing options and all the options on top such as "history", "move" , "follow"...I cant find them. Anyway my question is if we can just stick to the current version in our preferences section even a month from now or if the new skin will have to be it. – Distantlycharmed 16:15, October 7, 2010 (UTC) :Monaco is being deleted on Nov 3. Gone. You will be moved to the new skin automatically at that point in time. -- sulfur 16:20, October 7, 2010 (UTC) Thanks. Damn. This new skin is annoying as hell. So what is all this concealing stuff people are doing above? Is that to preserve the monaco style? I dont like this shitty new skin at all. Looks like the wikia people seriously have nothing better to do than shit all over what's good and working. And why is there this black 8 inch bar on the side that takes up space for no apparent reason? – Distantlycharmed 16:26, October 7, 2010 (UTC) ::What "black 8 inch bar"? Please describe in more detail, or upload a screenshot to this discussion. -- Cid Highwind 21:56, October 7, 2010 (UTC) The ridiculous thing is that this picture I uploaded is not displaying right now. Maybe you guys can see it. But anyway this is a screenshot from the Tom Paris article. Notice how there is this black border/bar on the right that squeezes the article and makes it look very narrow? It is essentially only half the page displaying the text and pics etc to the left - the rest is just black, empty space or bordering of some kind. – Distantlycharmed 22:22, October 7, 2010 (UTC) :::That's the new fixed width, wikia refuses to fully explain or budge on that, though I did get them to admit to selling the background for ad space on wikis before, and that they "might" do it again. - 22:31, October 7, 2010 (UTC) :Black? That's dark grey. Is your monitor set very dark? If so, that might explain why some of your images are having issues with the contrast and brightness being set too high. -- sulfur 22:46, October 7, 2010 (UTC) Black, dark grey ... whatever. The first 2 inches are black and then the rest is dark grey. The point is that it is a dark border that narrows the width of the text - just like Duke recognized - and it just looks terrible. It is wasted space. That is because they decided that every freaking page should display on the right side the "Browse memory alpha" box, and "recent changes" or whatever, which stays on top but because it is there, takes away unnecessary space on the entire page, reducing the width to something so narrow that it just looks bad. I would hardly call this a "fixed" new width. It hasnt fixed anything. Every article is gonna look squeezed like that. – Distantlycharmed 22:58, October 7, 2010 (UTC) :::Feel free to let wikia know about that, the only way it's going to change is if everyone complains about it. Apparently everyone in both betas weren't enough. - 23:05, October 7, 2010 (UTC) ::::you should change the width of your sidebars to 250px + 10px margin to the left, to fit it in the grid--Shisma "My tools" Well, this new skin seems to have removed several of the links I use regularly, including "My contributions", "Watchlist" and "Recent changes". I eventually figured out that they can be added to "My tools" at the bottom of the page — but at the moment, clicking on "Edit My Tools" brings up an infobox with white-on-white text. I was able to read the text by highlighting it, but if this can be changed it should. "My tools" doesn't seem to be working fully at the moment; the transition guide says that it should always contain links to "History" and "What links here", but it doesn't, and I can't seem to add them. Is this a Wikia problem, or is it something local? Finally, is it possible to have a default set of tools for site members, so that other people who might want these formerly standard tools don't have to add them manually? I couldn't find anything about this in the transition guide. —Josiah Rowe 21:35, October 7, 2010 (UTC) :Formatting issue fixed. Can't comment on the rest, other than to say that I do have "History" and "What links here" (and am missing the rest, just like you). -- Cid Highwind 21:54, October 7, 2010 (UTC) ::You have to add everything but History and What Links Here. I would suggest adding the Create a Page and Upload Photo options too, since they aren't on every page they should be. It wouldn't be too bad if you could populate the entire footer instead of just one menu, but wikia didn't even respond to that suggestion during the beta. - 22:08, October 7, 2010 (UTC) On most pages, "Create a page" is available in the upper right-hand corner, under the search bar. It's just not there in the "Memory Alpha" namespace, for some reason. "History" and "What links here" are on the menu for me too now. Thanks for fixing the formatting. —Josiah Rowe 02:13, October 8, 2010 (UTC) PNG images and galleries All PNG images are showing a light blue/white background when in a thumbnail or gallery. To make things worse, wide images, regardless of type, also show this blue/white background in a gallery if the image size is smaller than a certain amount (not sure where the line would be). The small image problem can be seen in the gallery on my user page, while Starfleet insignia or Assignment patch are good places to see the standard PNG problem. I reported both these problems during the beta and never got a response, so I'm not sure if it's on us or if wikia even knows about it. - 06:41, October 8, 2010 (UTC) Makeup for the new skin With the new skin now being available, we've started to change it to "our" look&feel as much as possible. This includes good work by Archduk3 that gave us a head start on keeping a consistent style. Some problems momentarily remain, but will be fixed during the next few days. If you want to help out, please change to the new skin in your preferences, and let us know about page elements that are colored differently, or are otherwise unreadable. On top of that, I created a "concealer" for the most ill-conceived elements of the new skin. Changes were made to the "Terms of Service" to forbid hiding various page elements in the site-wide standard skin. What is not forbidden, however, is to offer a re-use of my personal CSS files and to ask you to make some noise about it. So, if you want to join the party, see User:Cid Highwind/concealer.css for instructions, add your name to the list below, and make sure to let others know as well. -- Cid Highwind 15:19, October 7, 2010 (UTC) : What does it mean "conceal"? – Distantlycharmed 16:45, October 7, 2010 (UTC) "The most ill-conceived elements of the new skin" - many of which have been described in detail above. Namely: "image attribution", vanity "page edit attribution", "photo gallery module", the additional "spotlight module", the Facebook "like" button, undecipherable "no. of comments" speech bubble, and perhaps more in the future. -- Cid Highwind 16:54, October 7, 2010 (UTC) ::Since you asked for miscolored/unreadable page elements, all the right-hand modules are pretty much unreadable (click image at right for an example). Also invisible (white on white) are the suggestions that come up when you type in the search bar, and the categories when you add them in the special category part of the edit window. —Josiah Rowe 03:07, October 8, 2010 (UTC) :::Try them now. Don't forget to refresh. - 03:23, October 8, 2010 (UTC) ::The right-hand modules, search suggestions and the (somewhat pointless) "Edited x minutes ago by y" bar are all better now, thanks. The (even more pointless) "number of talk page contributors" balloon is still unreadable, but that's no great loss. The only problem I'm still seeing is in the edit window: if you're editing an entire page and you click on the "add category" field (between the main window and the summary field), any text you type (attempting to add a category) is white text on a very light grey background, though the suggestions that come up once you start typing are visible (black on white). If it helps, I can upload an image of that too. —Josiah Rowe 03:48, October 8, 2010 (UTC) :::Josiah - Please. I have the category select option disabled, so I'm not seeing that. :::Cid - The concealer removes the talk page link in namespaces outside of the main one, since the only link is still the talk balloon. - 04:15, October 8, 2010 (UTC) ::Screenshot of the "add category" field at right. —Josiah Rowe 05:01, October 8, 2010 (UTC) :::Should be fixed now. - 05:41, October 8, 2010 (UTC) ::Yep, it is. Thanks! —Josiah Rowe 06:32, October 8, 2010 (UTC) Yes, I'm concealing! *User:Cid Highwind *User:Archduk3 *User:Sulfur *User:Cepstrum *User:Distantlycharmed *User:Renegade54 *User:Jrofeta *User:Cleanse Is monobook being removed? Monobook is the best skin, imo. Simple and very usable. No wasted space. None of the useless and irrelevant wikia bs. Minimal ads; none in content. Is monobook being deleted with monaco? --bp 23:04, October 7, 2010 (UTC) :I hope to god not...I haven't used any other skin either. — Morder (talk) 23:42, October 7, 2010 (UTC) ::The schedule does not mention removing Monobook, though I don't know if it is mentioned elsewhere in the vast number of postings there. I use it as well.--31dot 23:55, October 7, 2010 (UTC) :::It has been confirmed to be staying for the time being due to its use on Uncyc. -- sulfur 00:14, October 8, 2010 (UTC)